Cratogeomys sp.—Yellow-faced Pocket
Gophers

Cratogeomys castanops (Baird 1852)—Yellow-faced Pocket
Gopher

Synonyms.Pappogeomys castanops.

In our region, the species
early on was known by its current name; it later was considered to belong to the genus
Pappogeomys (Russell 1968), otherwise limited to Mexico; now, once again,
Cratogeomys has been raised back to the generic level.

Fig. 1. Current distribution of Cratogeomys castanops in the study region.
Black outline is the extent of the Chihuahuan Desert.

As can be seen in Fig. 1, The U-bar Cave occurrences are to the west of the current
geographic range.

Fig. 2. Lateral and medial aspects of the right dentary of Cratogeomys
castanops from U-Bar Cave, Hidalgo Co., NM. Scale in mm.

Cratogeomys castanops is the only extant representative of the genus within the region.
For separation from other Wisconsin-age regional pocket gophers, see the Geomyidae account. This is a species with a relatively large body
size that generally inhabits relatively deep soils. It appears to be rather well
adapted to arid conditions and may expand its range in times of drought.

The Holocene records are included below (though not mapped) because of the
occurrence far from the historical distribution, indicating notable environmental
differences from the present.

†Cratogeomys sansimonensis Tomida 1987—San Simon Pocket
Gopher

Synonyms.Pappogeomys sansimonensis.

Sites.

Tomida (1987) described this species (as Pappogeomys sansimonensis) as part of the San Simon Fauna. He described it as being different from all recent species by the presence of narrow and thin enamel plates on the posterolabial surfaces of M1 and M2.